Elisheva ✡ A blog about death and mourning customs in Judaism. Anon is: Off / Offline during Shabbat. If you need something specific tagged, please ask.
Slovakia: 59 headstones smashed at Jewish cemetery in Námestovo
Via Jerusalem Post:
Dozens of headstones were knocked down and set on fire at a Jewish cemetery in Slovakia.
The damage was discovered on Monday at the Jewish cemetery of Námestovo, a town in northern Slovakia near the Polish border, TV Noviny reported Tuesday.
The perpetrators, who have not been identified, seemed to have worked methodically as they toppled entire rows of headstones at the cemetery, whose oldest graves are from the 18th century. No new burials have occurred in the cemetery in decades.
The headstones did not bear anti-Semitic symbols.
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The New Antisemite: https://ift.tt/38Nh44W
Hey you know how I said I was going to make a workbook on the kind of bullshit you need to do when someone you love dies? I actually did that.
HERE IS THE VERSION WITH LOTS OF SWEARING AT THE USELESS, SHITTY SITUATION YOU’RE IN.
HERE IS THE VERSION WITH A FAIR AMOUNT OF BLACK HUMOR BUT NO CURSEWORDS.
Featuring Helpful Sections such as:
Death Certificates – What you need, why you need them, and how to get them
Prepare to spend a long and miserable time on the phone
What the Everloving Fuck is Probate
Some Simple Dos and Don’ts
Shitty Mad Libs – Templates for writing Obituaries and Memorials
How to plan a non-religious death party
So you suddenly have to become some sort of hacker or some shit
This is an eighteen page book that you can print out, download, share, and give away; it is meant to be used to collect information about funeral planning and account management after a death OR you can use it BEFORE you die and give people information so they’re not stuck playing Nancy Fucking Drew while trying to keep seventeen cousins who crawled out of the woodwork from gutting each other in front of the fucking casket as they argue about who’s inheriting grandma’s favorite dentures.
It’s not exactly cheerful and it’s full of things that are probably going to feel really fucking raw if you’re processing a fresh death.
I’m sorry! I love you! Death is shitty! I’m trying to laugh about it a little and I hope you can laugh a little too because otherwise we’re all just going to cry together.
Good luck!
(in memory of my weirdo mother and her weirdo siblings who all died too fucking young and left me holding this flaming bag of dogshit)
When my mom died it wasn’t exactly unexpected but it was still sooner than we all thought it would happen. It was a huge punch in the guts and the thought of making things and not being able to show her and share them with her still hurts but in that first month it was like drowning.
So I made this for her, and shared it with and showed it to other people who are hurting, because my momma didn’t raise a quitter but she sure did raise a softhearted fool who wants everyone to feel a little more loved and a little more worthy and a little less alone.
Hey, so an Omaha Jewish cemetery was recently vandalized. Roughly 75 headstones were pushed off their bases and some of those were broken, with the damages at over $50,000. The temple is taking donations on their donate page, just make sure you select Cemetery Improvement Fund if you would like it to go to the cemetery. They hope to have completed the restoration by spring of 2020.
Many Jews light a yartzeit candle in memory of those we have lost. This year, Keshet and Congregation Beit Simchat Torah are offering this printable sticker to help us Jewishly mark Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). Each November 20th, we observe TDOR as we remember all of those lost to transphobic violence. The sticker can be printed at home on Avery Label size 94242, and will fit on most yartzeit candles. You can find it (and more information!) here.
THE CHEVRA KADISHA, meaning “sacred society,” is one of the oldest Jewish mutual aid traditions still around today. K’vod v’Nichum (Honor and Comfort), an organization that provides guidance and support to North American chevra kadisha groups, traces Jewish burial societies back to 13th-century Spain. Chevra kadisha customs traveled across Europe with Sephardic Jews fleeing persecution and flourished in Europe over the next centuries, such that the chevra kadisha is most often remembered as an early modern Ashkenazic tradition.
Historically, in addition to performing taharah and ensuring that the deceased is never left unattended from the moment of death to the moment of burial, the chevra kadisha might also help with sick care before the moment of death, or arrange and execute the funeral process. Its members were not always publicly known; their anonymity manifested the symbolic truth that the entire Jewish community rose to support the mourners among them.
Aspects of those traditions traveled to the US with Jewish immigrants and were once a boldly generative force in American Jewish life. Early chevra kadisha groups in 19th-century New York City spawned comprehensive Jewish grassroots mutual aid groups that often took the form of landsmanshaftn, aid societies for emigrants from the same areas of Central and Eastern Europe. These benevolent societies were more committed to popular participation and preventative community care than other Jewish institutions of that time, emphasizing democratic governance, offering the first opportunities for American Jewish women to create and lead their own community groups, and providing financial support to vulnerable families before their need became overwhelming. Even as these organizations expanded well beyond their origins in the chevra kadisha, the funeral arrangement and financial support they offered grieving families remained a significant draw for members. The values Jewish communities enacted through this approach to death—among them, egalitarianism, radical compassion, togetherness, responsibility, and human dignity—allowed them to survive in a nativist, antisemitic system. - Jordana Rosenfeld
Not a day goes by that I don’t think of them. Not a Shabbat passes that I don’t remember the horror of that weekend and the days that followed. On the one year anniversary, I’m still at a loss for words. It hurts too much.
But I’m grateful for the strength and love of our community and from G-d. We are so much stronger than those who would try to destroy us. Mir veln zey iberlebn.
May the memory of our righteous always be a blessing.
A kavvanah or meditation for Yizkor and Kaddish for those whose parents were hurtful.
“Dear G-d,
You know my heart. Indeed, You know me better than I know myself, so I turn to You before I rise for Kaddish. My emotions swirl as I say this prayer. The parent I remember was not kind to me. Their death left me with a legacy of unhealed wounds, of anger and of dismay that a parent could hurt a child as I was hurt.
I do not want to pretend to love, or to grief that I do not feel, but I do want to do what is right as a Jew and as a child.
Help me, O God, to subdue my bitter emotions that do me no good, and to find that place in myself where happier memories may lie hidden, and where grief for all that could have been, all that should have been, may be calmed by forgiveness, or at least soothed by the passage of time.
I pray that You, who raise up slaves to freedom, will liberate me from the oppression of my hurt and anger, and that You will lead me from this desert to Your holy place.”
If a person is near death, it is forbidden to leave him, so that he should not die alone. (And it is a mitzvah to stand by a person at the moment of death.)
Shulkhan Arukh, the comment in parentheses is by Rabbi Moses Isserles.
people better start talking about the fact a fucking cop shot and killed a native man in the middle of a Fourth of July fireworks display in full view of the watching public including family and children, this shit is so disgusting fuck America and fuck the motherfucking police. This was in poulsbo WA btw.
Stonechild “Stoney” Chiefstick was a Squamish man shot and killed by an officer they refuse to name in the middle of a park before while waiting for a firework show.
People are claiming the cops were called bc he was threatening people. Some claim he was threatening people with a screwdriver but that hasn’t been confirmed.
So. Even if all this is true and he was “acting weird” and threatening people why the fuck did it require murder? How much do you hate native people and not value their lives that you literary murder them in broad daylight even tho they have not actually attacked anyone? Who if they were white would be labeled as a “rowdy partygoer”. When white mass shooters are brought into custody unharmed?
At Anshe Emet, we make a difference. Please help us show respect for Ben Rosenstein as we purchase the headstone he was denied. Last weekend, we had the privilege of welcoming Noam Sienna to our synagogue for Shabbat. Here is an excerpt from his D'var Torah: "This story takes place just ove...
When I spoke at Anshe Emet Synagogue for Pride, I challenged them to transform the memory of queer Jewish history into action… One of the new projects that they have taken on is honouring Ben Rosenstein, a transmasculine Jewish immigrant who died of tuberculosis in 1915, and is buried in Chicago in a pauper’s grave without a headstone.
The synagogue is raising money to remember this queer/trans ancestor by providing Ben with a proper headstone. This project is so important, especially in a time when the stories we tell about America, about migration, and about family, are ever expanding. The greatest kindness that one can do in the Jewish tradition is to give dignity to the dead. Will you help me honour the life and death of Ben Rosenstein?
One of my cousins passed away unexpectedly at the age of 35, and had been paying back a loan from the bank. About two weeks after his death, my great aunt received a statement from the bank (his mail was being delivered to her house) about a late payment. She called the bank and explained the situation and the only thing a manager could say was “Well, that’s unfortunate. We can arrange so payments will resume in 30 days, that should be enough time to have already paid for the other arrangements.”
On top of the unexpected $10,000 funeral, cremation and burial bill, my aunt had to finish paying my uncle’s $5,000 loan. She’s a disabled retiree, on a fixed income, and could barely afford to pay for her insulin for diabetes. She nearly lost her home of more than 40 years. Fuck the system.
My great-grandmother had her identity stolen before she died at the age of 93, and thousands of charges were racked up on credit cards in her name. After she passed away, they called my mother to try and collect. My mom laughed at them, and told them: “She’s dead, good luck collecting.” The credit card asked my mother, “Don’t you want to clear your grandmother’s debts? Don’t you want to clear her good name?” My mom laughed at them again. “No,” she said. “Because a 90 year old wasn’t watching porn with those credit cards, and her name is fine. Don’t give credit cards to old women likely to pass away soon. This is on you.”
Which is how I learned as a young child to always question collection agents, and to never pay off debts that aren’t your own. They often can’t even collect that money from the estate, if there is one, depending on how you write your will and what kind of account the money was kept in.
If a loved one of yours dies and bill collectors (credit cards, loans, etc etc) start calling you off the hook and request that you pay off their debts, tell them in no uncertain terms to go fuck themselves.
The reason being is that the moment you give them a single penny, that debt is now on YOU because you’ve now agreed to pay it off.
Do not agree to pay off their debt. Do not pass go, do not give them $200.
Boosting this to let people know that if any of these greedy little dog-fuckers start harassing them to pay off a relatives debt the correct thing to do is just tell them to piss off and not pay them a single thing
And that there is NOTHING they can do if you do this
Never, ever, EVER pay so much as a single cent on a debt owed by someone who’s passed away. You make even a single payment and that’s considered you accepting responsibility for the debt, and they can then legally expect you to repay the whole thing.
They’re like vampires - they can’t collect unless you let them in. Don’t invite them in.
It’s a minor pet peeve, but it is everywhere today so errrr…. please keep in mind that “Rest in Peace”/RIP literally comes from a latin phrase and is a very very deeply Christian expression.
When talking about the departed, Jews say “may their memory be a blessing.”
So please, when talking about a dead person who is Jewish, try to keep in mind that RIP is a Christian phrase.
The Destruction of the Jewish Cemetery, Thessaloniki.
In December 1942, 500 workers began to destroy the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of the city. The Jews of Thessaloniki had been using this cemetery for hundreds of years and it covered an area of over 35 hectares. Families rushed to recover their loved ones remains but many were unable to do so and years later, skulls and bones could still be seen in open graves. The marble tombstones were used to build roads and a swimming pool for the Germans. There are still some parts of the city were you can see tombstones that were used to patch walls, a scarring reminder of the horrors of the war. After the war, the government deemed that the land could be built over and Aristotle University now stands directly over the ancient cemetery.
This year I lit a candle for Gitl Apel. Gitl Apel was born in Sielce, Poland in 1924 to Tzvi and Genya. She was single. Prior to WWII she lived in Sielce, Poland. During the war she was in Sielce, Poland. This record of her life is based on testimony from her cousin.
